Paschal Donohoe to discuss customs union with UK Labour Party

Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe will meet senior figures in the British Labour Party on Monday to discuss its new policy of remaining in a customs union with the EU after Brexit.

Mr Donohoe will hold a series of meetings in London, including one with John McDonnell, Britain’s shadow chancellor.

The Minister will also meet Philip Hammond, the chancellor of the exchequer, and David Lidington, the minister for the cabinet office who is effectively prime minister Theresa May’s deputy.

His first meeting with Mr McDonnell follows UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s announcement last week that he would seek to keep Britain in a permanent customs union after Brexit.

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Mr Corbyn said one of the main reasons for the new policy is to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

In an interview broadcast at the weekend, Ms May said she wants the British government to work with Dublin to see how a hard border can be avoided.

The Government has stressed, however, that it will only do so under the auspices of the EU Brexit task force led by Michel Barnier and not on a bilateral basis with the UK. Ms May is sticking to her position that Britain will leave the European single market and customs union after Brexit.

Scant detail

Tánaiste Simon Coveney also gave an interview to the BBC's Andrew Marr Show and said that while Ms May's keynote speech on Brexit last week – in which she set out her position on the future EU-UK relationship – was welcome, many details were not provided.

“She hasn’t really gone into any more detail than we’ve already heard in terms of how she’s going to solve the problem of maintaining a largely invisible border on the island of Ireland,” Mr Coveney said. “What she referred to essentially in terms of detail was the basis of two papers that the British negotiating team published last summer, which talked about a customs union partnership and also talked about streamlined customs arrangements, those being the two options that she wants to explore further. And of course she didn’t refer to the detail.”

Phil Hogan, the European commissioner for agriculture, said Ms May had indicated that she is willing to give some ground to the EU in forthcoming negotiations.

Mr Hogan said Ms May indicated she wanted a deal somewhere between that between Canada and the EU (which would mean a “harder” version of Brexit), and the arrangement with Norway, which is a member of the single market and has a deeper relationship.

“Now that we at least know that we can negotiate accordingly,” he said. “She gave a lot more detail in this speech than she has in any other speech and she indicated her intention to concede some ground in relation to the European Court of Justice, paying into the agencies, regulatory standards and developing some kind of customs arrangement.”